PLoS Biology Podcast Episode 04: The Search for New Life Forms

In this month’s episode of the PLoS Biology Podcast, PLoS Biology Editor Megan Hall interviews Gerald Joyce, who is Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA.

In the latest issue of PLoS Biology, Dr. Joyce has published an article entitled “Bit by Bit: The Darwinian Basis of Life”, where he discusses our search for new forms of life, and how we would know whether a new life form is truly alien or not.

In this podcast, we’ll discuss these topics with Dr. Joyce, and learn more about the probability of finding new life forms. We’ll also discuss the definition of life at the molecular level, and whether the emerging field of synthetic biology can actually lead to new definitions of life.

(You can listen here by clicking the Play button, or to subscribe to the RSS feed and download, you can visit the Soundcloud page by clicking the link below)

About PLOS Podcast

The PLOS Podcast blog was created to highlight some of the amazing authors that publish with the PLOS journals. About once a month, PLOS Biology Editor Ruchir Shah will host an interview with a PLOS author to discuss their research in more depth and to describe the relevance of their work to the general public. The podcasts will cover the entire range of biological sciences, from neuroscience to evolution to molecular biology.